Anyone done one with a regular "200 amp" socket? It appears some/many are rated "200 amps continuous, 240 amp maximum". I never noticed this until recently as I have a house with a bunch of electric heat and I don't want to go up to the expense of a 320 socket, and 200 is borderline. The way I see it, there is no requirement that a meter socket be protected at it's rating, so in fact I could go with any size service disconnect as long as the socket rating meets the load calc.
A 200A panel is borderline?
How much running load, real world, would you estimate you'll actually have on the service?
If I felt comfortable it would be well under 200A continuous, I might use a 225A panel with a 200A meterbase, possibly, maybe. I'd sure lean towards a 320 though, just because I like cushion ...but sometimes customer budgets are tighter than what my preferences want to use.
On a sidenote, I used the free excel load calc on this site for a 100 amp service change we did a couple weeks ago. The existing panel just didn't have enough space. The inspector saw a couple of circuits were added also and thought we needed a 200A service, so he asked for a load calc.
I ran it through the excel calculator and came up with 137 amps. Which made us all poop our pants since we just installed a replacement 100 amp service!!
We called the power co. and asked for peak demand over the last 12 mos. instead. 62 amps. (Huge sigh of relief!!! And a passed inspection!!)